By: Nana
Appiah Acquaye
The GSMA has announced a new
initiative aimed at improving artificial intelligence (AI) inclusion across
Africa by supporting the development of AI models capable of understanding and
responding in African languages.
The announcement was made
during the AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, where GSMA Chief Regulatory
Officer and President of the Mobile for Development Foundation, John Giusti,
participated in the Partner2Connect workshop.
The African AI Languages
Model Project seeks to address language gaps in current AI systems, many of
which are built primarily around a limited number of high-resource languages.
Giusti noted that with more
than 2,000 languages spoken across Africa, there is a risk that millions of
people could be excluded from the benefits of AI if emerging technologies are
unable to effectively understand and serve diverse communities.
Through the new pledge, the
GSMA will bring together stakeholders from across the continent to strengthen
Africa’s capacity to adopt, develop and influence the future direction of AI
technologies.
The initiative aims to
promote the creation of more representative AI models that reflect Africa’s
linguistic diversity while supporting broader digital inclusion and equitable
access to emerging technologies.
The GSMA said collaboration
among governments, technology companies, researchers and other ecosystem
players will be critical to ensuring that AI development responds to the needs
and realities of African communities.
